Friday's Afternoon Update

What you need to know about Florida today

| 4/12/2013

Floridians slower to file income taxes

With a quarter of Florida's 10 million individual tax returns coming in usually during the last two weeks before the April 15 deadline, it's crunch time ramped up. This year, even more Floridians are filing later since the tax season got off to a slow start with Congress and President Barack Obama not agreeing to budget compromises until the new year [Source: South Florida Sun-Sentinel]

While private rocket launches and entrepreneur space ventures will take years to replace the thousands of jobs lost to NASA cutbacks, deep-pocketed investors are lining up to take advantage of Cape Canaveral's aerospace infrastructure, from launch pads to trained personnel. Meanwhile, there's more to the Space Coast than just aviation and aerospace.

The majority of Fort Lauderdale-area business leaders who meet quarterly to give feedback to the Federal Reserve say the South Florida economy is poised to surge. The Greater Fort Lauderdale Council of Economic Advisors, a group of top executives from industries including restaurant, hotel, construction, banking, medical and advertising, say they're seeing the evidence of rising consumer spending in their own businesses. [Source: South Florida Sun-Sentinel]

Who should define a living wage in Florida: Your state or county?

The Florida House has passed a bill that would preempt local living wage ordinances and a similar version is making its way through the Senate. The House measure would not allow local governments to mandate that their vendors pay employees more than a set minimum or provide them with special work-related benefits. [Source: WLRN]

At dinner recently in Tallahassee, Mayor John Marks, along with marketing honchos Karen Moore and Ron Sachs, filled my ears with tales of the renewed vibrancy in the capital city. The gains aren’t coming from state government, but from for-profit enterprises, innovative young entrepreneurs and spinoffs from the area’s educational institutions.